


Hieros Gamos (Sacred Marriage)

by lemonbalmlemonverbena



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Harm to Animals, Light Bondage, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Public Claiming, Public Humiliation, Public Nudity, Public Sex, Restraints, Virgin Sacrifice, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-08
Updated: 2018-11-13
Packaged: 2019-07-28 03:23:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16233203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemonbalmlemonverbena/pseuds/lemonbalmlemonverbena
Summary: Based, in part, on a Tumblrmeta by sillier-things about hieros gamosrituals in ancient religions. Set on a Greek island in the Bronze Age.Mild dubcon and underage vibes, but in this story, everyone is the age of consent and participating voluntarily.{{Plot what plot/porn without plot}}Note: This is also basically Maroucia fanfic on top of being GRRM fanfic. This is completely and totally derivative of her extraordinary “The Summer Maid.” I should have credited and linked before. That was a mistake and I apologize. I was so consumed with TSM that I had to write fic to get it out of my system. I hope M. will consider the similarities between this work and hers in light of my massive respect for and fascination with her creativity and talent.





	1. an offering of blood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Maroucia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maroucia/gifts).



She was bound hand and foot, spread-eagle on the vast, well-worn olive-tree stump. Her arms were raised above her head, wrapped in bronze cuffs with tight straps that knotted toward old bronze links put into the wood hundreds of years ago and used over so many centuries for the sacrifice. She could pull perhaps a foot in each direction, but not reach for anything, nor touch herself.

Her legs were more loosely bound, the bronze leg irons and chains gave her room to spread her legs or close them as she saw fit. She was bare naked, flawless and creamy from top to bottom, her lips wet and pink, her nether lips hidden below a triangle of dark red curls. She wore a blindfold. She could see nothing, but she would feel everything.

He was naked too, but that was for the sight of the gods, not for her. He’d been hard since he’d woken that morning, and his cock was up and out for all to see, bouncing and twitching in anticipation. The old priestess had even complimented his hard-on saying it was proof of the generosity of the gods and an omen of a good and fruitful harvest of meat and mead for the island.

The ritual they were to perform was the civilized modern one. In olden times the blood sacrifice of a virgin was life blood, and daughters were slit ear to ear, and then their bodies hung up high by their ankles. As their blood drained from them, villagers fought to capture a drop or two in a wooden chalice and drink it down. Capturing a whole mouthful was considered especially good luck.

Over the years, though, the priests had declared this a barbaric misunderstand of the intentions of the gods, and now a broken maidenhead was considered a complete and righteous sacrifice. He was expected to display his bloody “sword” for all to see when the first ritual was complete, and its display was considered the official beginning of the island’s most sacred and important festival week.

But before he blooded her, he was allowed to touch her. Her blood was the sacrifice to the gods, they both were doing their duty, but he wanted to give her more than fear and blood.

As he emerged from edge of the colonnade at the edge of the temple sanctum, white rock dust crunched under his feet and the priests began to hum their prayers in the archaic religious Greek the priests used, deep, vibrating tones that spoke to the divinity of man and woman. He saw her flinch as he stepped toward her, and then bit her bottom lip and squeeze her legs together tighter. Was she afraid or excited?

He came up to her said and said her name, his pet name for her, and then her real one. She turned toward the sound of his voice. “I’m going to touch you now, girl, just your face, and then down to your toes. If I hurt you somehow, you make a noise, and I’ll stop. If you like it and want more, you hum and you sing with the priests. Understand?”

She nodded yes. He ran the pads of his thumbs over her forehead and her eyebrows, and the sharp edges of her cheekbones, and then pulled on her earlobes, and she giggled and smiled and he stopped and she lost her smile--startled and frightened--and all he wanted was to bring it back. He stroked her cheekbones again then, and her jawline, with the pads of his thumbs, and then stroked the long line of her neck with one finger. She tipped her head back and opened her neck to him, and it was all he could do not to kneel before her and take a bite out of that fine white flesh.

And then he dared to touch her lips, just with one thumb, and she parted her lips for him and exhaled a sweet little breath. He reached inside her hot red mouth with his index finger, and he told her to suck, and she did, so pretty, and he felt a rush of blood to his cock. The priests had watched him closely for three days and he hadn’t been able to take himself in hand. Some shit about conserving the holy energy of the gods.

He leaned over her then, more eager than he thought he’d be. “I’m going to kiss your lips now, Sansa. Will you let me?” As he leaned down to her, he saw her breasts arch and her nipples pucker sharp and tight. He hadn’t even touched her there yet. But he would.

It was a chaste kiss for just a moment, and then another moment, and he felt her hum her acceptance and open her lips ever so gently, and he kissed her hard and plunged his tongue into her mouth.

She was pulling up to him, even as she was bound. She couldn’t reach, but she wanted more. He suddenly knew that this leaning half-way over her, lips only touching, wasn’t what either of them wanted. He pulled away, and gazed at her perfection. He allowed himself to kiss one breast, just the bottom curve, and she squirmed and caved in on herself. He waited a moment, and blew a stream of air onto her nipples and she instinctually thrust her breasts back toward him.

He pulled on one nipple as a reward for her receptiveness. She keened and pushed toward his touch, even as it was already gone. The priests hummed louder all around them, waving their burning sage and rocking side to side.

He leaned down close to her ear. This was just for her. “Put your legs down girl, and spread them apart. Wide. I’m not going to fuck you yet. I’m just going to kiss you, but we’re going to do it right. None of this dainty pretending that what we aren’t here for what we’re here for,” and then he ran his hand down from her neck over her flanks and hips and down to her thighs. He stroked top of one thigh firmly and she opened as she’d been told to do. My good Sansa. My good girl. “The other one, too. Show yourself to the gods. I know your pussy will be the closest thing to god these priests and priestesses see in all their living days.”

She frowned at that--sacrilege!--but did as she was bid, and he gazed her sweet pink cunt for just a moment. He could see she was already glistening. The sexuality of the scene had affected her already, virgin though she was. And then he quickly covered her with his body, so that he wouldn’t have to share too much with the damn gods. She gasped. But then they were there, together, still, and touching, ever so gently. His weeping cock was above her pink cunt, bouncing and nudging her opening.

He whispered into her ear, “I won’t enter you for a long time. Not until you ask me to. Understand?” And she nodded silently again, and he wished he could see her blue eyes. He found, inexplicably, that he missed them. “Kiss me, Sansa.”

She kissed his neck first, and giggled, and then found his jaw and nuzzled his rough beard her lips and nosed the scarred edge of his mouth. Then she kissed all over his scarred cheek, peppering it over with sweet girlish pecks, and then her lips found his and she darted her tongue in between his lips, and he sank into her sweet breath.

He hummed his pleasure and she pulled back, uncertain, so then he nibbled her lower lip and she hummed and breathed in pleasure. He plunged his tongue into her mouth then, and she opened even wider, willing and warm. When Sandor sucked on her tongue, she rolled her head back and tugged at her bindings. He could tell she wanted to get closer to him. Dear bird.

He was propped above her, leaning on his elbows, her arms bound above her, her legs spread, and immediately she began to squirm up to him. He didn’t want to stop kissing her, but he thought she deserved another reward for being such a devout and compliant servant of the gods.

“Did you like it when it touched your tits, Sansa?” She froze, and stilled. “Tell me the words for what you want me to do to your tits. Should I suck on your nipples or just knead them with my hands or do you want to be bitten, like the delicious offering that you are?”

He couldn’t see her eyes, but he imagined they were wide as platters. “I don’t know about any of that,” she whispered. “You’re the first man to ever touch me anywhere.” He barked a laugh of triumph. Good enough. He found one of her nipples and sucked, and he found the other with his thumb and strummed it like a taut string on a bow or a musical instrument. She hummed and sung at that, and he thought that her response to him was some kind of perfect harmony with the music of the godly men and women around them.

She started rubbed against his cock then, with her cunt, trying to find friction, chasing his knob with her nether lips trying to get something she maybe didn’t quite understand.

He leaned back then, and took his cock in hand as he gazed at her. She whined at the withdrawal of his warmth.

He ran his cockhead up and down her slit again and again and again. She spread her legs wider and begin thrusting up with her hips, using her sweet little ass muscles as leverage against the olive stump. They already had a rhythm. He thought of using his fingers on her, but he’d promised not to fuck her until she asked, so he simply bent over her again, and kissed her lips and ground his cock in between her lips relentlessly, letting the tip just graze her opening.

She continued grinding up at him, kissing his face frantically. “Tell me what you want, little bird,” he rumbled into her lips. “More. This feels good, but...”

“You want more? You want me to fuck you now?” “Yes, don’t stop at the edge anymore. I want...”

“You want my cock to break you open and fuck you from a girl to a woman?”

She froze then, a little frightened. When she chewed on the rosebud of her lower lip and reached her bound arms forward as if she wanted to hide her breasts behind them, he felt a strange clench in his heart.

“I think so. Will it hurt very much?” she whispered, so he he was the only one who could hear. He pumped his hand over his cock three times before he answered, and then when a drop of clear liquid emerged at the tip, he rubbed it over the cockhead.

“It will hurt some, but I won’t hurt you on purpose. You know that, right?” She nodded, and took a deep breath, and then another, and he saw that she was trying to be brave. _If I serve the gods well, would they give her to me after this? She’s too fine for the likes of me, but no other mortal man deserves her either. I’ll be good to her. I will. Please._

“Bird, I’m going to touch your cunt now and then kiss it—“

“Kiss it!?” she blurted out, in shock.

He chuckled long and deep at that and gave up trying to explain it in words. He put his whole hand over her cunt then, and ran two fingers over her slit. She was slick and smooth as a trout, but he had the clearest intuition that her lower lips had never been so engorged and swollen in her life. He hoped that meant that losing her maidenhood wouldn’t be unbearably painful. He dipped his fingertips, so gently, into her wetness and pulled it up to her nub. Her gasp at his touch rewarded him. He petted her button slowly at first and then faster and faster, and she panted along with him at the same rhythm. He leaned over her and muttered into her ear, “You’re all right, girl. Just breathe.”

“Sandor!”

At that he leaned down and kissed her cunt, as he’d promised. He licked her length and her thighs threatened to clamp around his ears and he pushed them back almost vertical. Then he sucked on her clit, and with that, she screamed an ear-splitting cry of pleasure and gritted out a series of high, sweet “ohh” cries as she rode out a long hard orgasm. He hadn’t wanted her to come until he was inside her, but somehow the failure of his plans didn’t feel like a failure.

He looked around then at the assembled priests and priestesses, euphoric in their chanted songs and high on the fragrance of burning sage and exotic incenses that were said to give the holy ones visions. The head priestess nodded to him, and the head priest knelt and raised his arms to the sun, asking for the blessings of the gods.

“Ask me, Sansa,” he said, gripping his cock fiercely tight to keep himself from spilling into the air.

“Please fuck me now, Sandor. I...I’m lonely and cold without your body beside mine and I know the gods have made me this way so that I can serve them righteously,” she said and then she bit her lip again and he wondered again how a girl so womanly and desirable could also be so profoundly guileless and innocent.

He spread her knees and rolled her hips up and positioned himself at her entrance. He watched her inhale and fucked into her at the exhale, and he knew he was tearing her apart. She cried out and he saw the pain on her face. She was the tightest sheath imaginable and he pushed into her as fast as he dared until he bottomed out, his balls flush against her ass. And then he stilled, not moving a muscle.

He kissed her temple, and her ear, and her jaw, slowly as can be. She inhaled and exhaled, once, twice, thrice. Her face was a mask of discomfort, and then...she squirmed under him, an enticing wiggle of her bum. She seemed to pull back from him and then push forward. She was so wet and hot and damnably tight around his cock that he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t spurt into her for nothing.

“I’m all right, Sandor. I’m all right. Do what you must do with me. I’m all right,” she whispered in his ear. He realized nothing pleased him more than when she whispered just to him, not to the gods or the priests or the assembled villagers.

He pulled nearly all the way out, leaving just his cockhead inside her, and then plunged back in and let go. He snapped his hips into her and she wrapped her magnificent legs around him and in embarrassingly short order he realized his time pounding her cunt was almost over and he going to cum inside her.

“Yes,” she said in her private whisper voice, again and again, grinding up into him in a rhythm with the words every time he plunged into her.

In the moments just before he roared his release and released his seed, he murmured a prayer to their gods for fertility and fruitfulness, not just for the island, but for him and her.

As he came to his senses after his orgasm, he realized the crowd was dead silent. He pulled himself out of his bird’s embrace and stood up to his full height so the crowd could see. He turned in a full circle displaying the maiden’s blood on his cock and smeared into his pubic hair, and pushed open Sansa’s thighs so they could see the blood smeared there too.

It was done. As the crowd roared wildly, and Sansa squeezed her thighs shut demurely, Sandor felt his flaccid cock stirring again. Good. They had two more rituals to perform, and it was considered a bad omen if the man couldn’t bring full balls and hard cock to each one.


	2. the sky god and the nereid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The second ritual is held at the water temple.

Sansa loved the story of the sky god and the nereid that their island was named for. The sky god had seen the nereid from afar and been captivated by her beauty. They were married and when he placed the gift of his love in her mouth, she became pregnant and birthed the island itself and all the fish and porpoises that lived in the waters surrounding the island and all the sea creatures that lived along the shore.

The second ritual was a reenactment of this famous story, and if she did her duty well and properly, the gods would bless the sea with vast schools of fish to feed them and favorable winds for their fishing boats. She was more nervous about the coming ritual than the first or the last. For most of the ceremony she was guided and led by the priests or by Sandor, but if she failed to swallow down every drop of Sandor’s love it would bring misfortune to their people. It was her responsibility, and if she failed...

As she waited for the priests to come and unchain her from the olive stump, she wished she could talk to Sandor about it. Harsh though he was, she trusted him. She always felt that he told her the truth, whereas sometimes she thought that the old priestess and the priests were telling her things in a way that she suspected wasn’t quite wholly correct, or that they were laughing at her behind their hands. They made her feel like a very simple-minded country girl from the poor side of the island, but Sandor never embarrassed her. Well, he made her _blush_ , but he never made her feel like a naive fool.

He was still here. She hadn’t heard him walk away. Maybe? Yes, when she stretched out her leg, she caught the curve of his calf with her foot and rubbed against it, enjoying the sensation of the coarse hair and the hard muscle against the soft arch of her foot. She felt him sit down beside her and pet her calf with his big hand.

“Tut, tut! Both of you know touching is not permitted until after the second ritual. You’ll have plenty of time for all that tonight out on the rock,” scolded the old priestess. Sansa thought she heard Sandor growl under his breath. He was called the Hound, so it made sense that he growled, just like her dog Lady growled when strangers came to their hut on the plateau below the ridge, on the far northern tip of the island.

She heard footsteps approach and then the soft hands of a priest unchain her wrists and then her ankles.

“Come, Sansa, we must ready you. You may remove your blindfold once you are in the women’s baths, but only there. Otherwise you must remain humbled by your blindness before the gods until the ceremony is over tomorrow. Do you understand?” said the tall, willowy priestess with the long white braid.

“Yes, lady holiness, I understand,” said Sansa.

As she stood upright, she felt Sandor’s thick seed dripping down her thighs, and she could smell it mixed with her virgin blood. It had hurt when he entered her--very much--but after a time, she had realized she liked the feeling of him inside of her. It felt like she was full where once she had been empty, even though she _hadn’t_ felt empty before he entered her body. Another undiscovered oddity of womanhood, she supposed.

Still, there _was_ a soreness between her legs, and she was glad that the next ritual would give her some respite.

The soft-handed priests led her away from the first altar and as she was pulled along, she found herself thinking not of home, not of her sister and brothers, but of Sandor. She wondered where he was standing, and where she was in relation to him. _His_ hands were not soft at all, but calloused and scratchy, yet he used them quite gently for such a rough-handed man. It seemed a paradox.

When the priests had come to her hut two moons ago and asked her to join this year’s group for selection, she’d refused not once, but twice. But the third time, _he_ came with them, and for the first time since their parents had died and Robb and Jon and Theon had gone off to the wars, the dogs welcomed a visitor. Shaggydog snapped at the high priestess even as he showed his belly to Sandor and demanded chin scratches. Sansa felt it was a message from the powers that be. She’d never expected to be chosen, but she knew that if she was, the rituals would be performed in company with a sympathetic soul, not some selfish and cruel attention-seeker.

And then he had selected _her_ from all the girls in the crowd that day, when they’d all been blindfolded and chained together and lined up (naked!) for the selection at the amphitheater.

It was a great honor and a generous gift that ensured prosperity no matter what the climate or the fortunes of their little plot in the high hills. The family of the chosen would be fed generously by the island community for the next ten years. Arya and Rickon were just babies when their parents had been killed, and there was no one to teach them how to hunt or fish. Bran, of course, just sat in his chair and stared at the sea. He ate nothing but broth and bitter greens, and grew frailer by the day. They did the best they could, but Bran was a cripple, Arya and Rickon were half-feral children, and Sansa was just one slim girl on her own with four human mouths to feed. At least the four hungry wolves could feed themselves. Sansa planted and harvested her little kitchen garden three times a year, and collected olives from the trees on the ridges above where they lived, but Sansa knew that sometimes she went to bed with a rumbling tummy. She always fed Arya and Rickon and Bran first fruits, but she worried that they wouldn’t grow tall and strong if they didn’t have more and better food.

All she had to do was complete the ritual successfully and her siblings would be rich in ox meat and goat mutton and blue crab and octopus for all the days of their youth. Sansa whispered a prayer to the three goddesses who protected lovers and the harvest and the hearth. _Guide me through what lies ahead, me and Sandor, too. Please._

“Come, Sansa, we will take you through the three baths and prepare you for the second ritual,” said the priestess, leading her into the cooler space that was the island’s famous grotto. The priestess untied her blindfold, then kissed her on both cheeks. It was dim inside the cave but even the low light dazzled her eyes after so long in darkness.

First was the hot bath. She was attended by two older women who had devoted their lives to serving the nereids and nerites of their island’s harbors and fishing waters and baths. First Sansa was rubbed with thick, heavy olive oil, including her face and her breasts, and her bottom and the space between her thighs--all the way up to her lower lips and even inside!--before she was nudged into the steaming hot pool. Then she was laid out upon a platform, spread-eagle again, as the old two women used strigils to scrape the oil and dirt and blood and cum from her skin. After that they scrubbed her all over with soft pumice stones, rinsed her again, and oiled her again, this time with a thinner, more refined grade of olive oil.

As they massaged in to the oil to her back and thighs and then turned her over to rub it under her arm pits and along her flanks and between her legs, she thought of what Sandor had done to her on the altar, how it felt when he suckled on her nipples and kissed her--her woman’s place. She didn’t know that men could use those places for themselves. She thought that nipples were only for feeding babies and that her woman’s place was merely for the business of being a woman.

As she thought of what he’d done, she felt a rush of blood to her lower lips and wished she could reach down there and touch herself he had touched but there were _so_ many people watching her, and without the blindfold she felt shy under their gazes, so she merely squeezed her thighs together in a quiet rhythm.

After the hot bath, she was left floating in the warm pool for over an hour as priests surrounded her and sang their songs and cast pouches of holy herbs onto braziers beside the water, sending up blue and red and green sparks. The warm water soothed the rawness she felt down below. Sandor had called it both a cunt and a pussy. She’d never called it _anything_ before. The priestess had only asked her if she’d seen goats or dogs mating, and gestured vaguely at the carvings of mating that adorned the temple pediment, and when Sansa nodded, that was considered enough to prepare her for the rituals. She wondered what her mother would have said to her all about this. They’d never talked about the rituals, but Sansa knew that she was doing the right thing, because Sandor had been guided by the gods to choose her and if she was worthy and pleased him and the gods, she would have the blessings of both the island and the temple and a righteous gift for her family.

Finally, Sansa was led into cold room and submerged into the cold water three times. The water here was said to be colder than even the ocean at night. As she walked up the steps out of the cold bath to the platform where she would begin the second ritual, she saw that her nipples had pebbled from the cold and remembered the same erection and goosebumped flesh had also happened when Sandor had touched her there. Did that mean she was ready for the next act?

The old priestess came to her on the platform and petted her long wet hair and retied the blindfold around her head. She felt the priestess caress the curve of her bum, smooth and slick because of the olive oil, and heard her say, “You are a true beauty, but remember to put away your pride and your affectations when you kneel before him. Submission is the path, submission before god and man. Do you understand?”  
  
Sansa nodded vigorously, _yes_ , even though she wasn’t quite sure that she did.

The priestess led her down another set of steps, one two three four five, and then along a path laid with small smooth tiles. Sansa could hear the ocean in front of her. Commoners were not allowed in the water temple so she had no memory in which she could place herself. She imagined columns carved out of the limestone, and a vast cavernous arena meant to catch the wind and the ocean spray and the blessings of the sea gods.

Finally, she felt herself being led around a large object, and gently nudged to her knees. She reached out in front of her and brushed into flesh. Sandor’s knee, and yes, his thigh above and calf below. It was strangely thrilling to be able to touch him again. She heard him rattle his chains. In the second ritual it was the man who was bound. He must not interfere with the proper receipt of the gift.

“Hello, bird,” he said under his breath, even as the priests began another harmony, deep and reverbant in the cave temple, but not quite loud enough to overcome the sound of the waves behind her. She was on the ocean side because she represented the nereid; he was closer to the land because the father god who lorded above all things, land and sea and thunder and lightning alike.

“Should I just...start?” she asked, timidly.

“Ha,” said Sandor. “You could, I suppose, but we could also start somewhere else. Your choice.”

“Where else?” she asked.

“Come to me,” he said. “Stand between my legs, or climb on me and wrap your legs around my waist, and come close to me.”

She thought of the first ritual, and how she’d liked it very much when his cock had touched her cunt before he put it inside her. She felt awkward in her blindness, so she put both hands out to touch him as she found her way. His thighs were as hard as the stone chair in which he sat. She pushed upward to his hips and when she got there, she dared to brush her hand, briefly, over his...cock and balls. He was already hard, which she knew--from the carvings outside the temple--to be good for the act. The balls were wrinkly and loose, but as she touched them, they seemed to tighten a bit and Sandor caught his breath. Perhaps he liked that?

And then she felt her way up his belly and chest--so many ridges and planes!--until she reached his shoulders. She hung onto them as she wrapped her legs around his hips and pulled herself toward him.

She leaned into him and brushed her face against his. His beard smelled of olive oil and incense and woodsmoke from the fires. She touched his forehead and eyebrows and cheekbones just the way he had done to her, with the pads of her thumbs. Poor lopsided Hound. One side was smooth and soft, and the other was craggy and rough and misshapen. She realized he could see, even though she was blind, and she didn’t want him to observe pity on his face, so she returned her thumbs to his jawline, and then traced his pulse down, and finally traced his collar bones before pressing a chaste kiss on his forehead.

He chuckled, and she noticed that the priests behind her had grown quieter.

“Kiss me, little bird,” he said. “Properly.”

“Are we doing this wrong?” she whispers. “The priests sound displeased.”  
  
“Those jealous old bags can all drown as far as I’m concerned. Kiss me,” he said.

She scolded him in her mind for his blasphemous words--what if he exhausted the patience of the gods?--but she kissed him just the same. As their lips met, she felt his hips twitch below her. She realized she was in control of how much to touch his cock. She could pull up and away and deny him, or slid down and touch him. She liked this position. How many positions were there for people? Dogs and goats only ever did it the one way.

She liked his lips, and his tongue, and the way he growled a little when she nibbled on his lower lip. Kissing was nice. Well, kissing Sandor was nice. There were other men who blew kisses at her when they went into the market at the end of the harvest season, and she didn’t think she would want to kiss them.

“I wish I could touch you, bird, but these fucking chains,” he said.

“I wish you could touch me, too,” she sighed into his mouth, dropping her hips as she did so and grinding against him.

“Touch yourself if you like, the gods made your body for pleasure, doesn’t matter who pulls it out of you, gods or men or yourself,” he said, as he sprinkled kisses along her temple and forehead.

She thought about how her nipples had hardened as she’d emerged from the cold water and touched the globe of her breasts. They seemed fuller than they ever had before, as if becoming a woman had somehow made them more womanly. She tested their weight and then pushed them up and together, and then drifted her fingers to her nipples. She pulled on them, and strummed them as Sandor had done, and felt a warmth tingle between her legs.

“I like that,” she said.

“Good girl,” he said.

She _was_ a good girl. She always tried to do her best at everything, and very often succeeded at the arts and crafts to which she turned her hand. Her garden was always tidy and green, her cooking was tasty, and her weavings were sought out by many women at the local market. If she could teach herself those and succeed, she could surely prove herself a worthy nereid, couldn’t she?  
  
At that, she slipped back to her knees before Sandor, and reached between his legs for his cock. He groaned at her touch and pulled forward as far as he could on the stone chair. She couldn’t see it, but she could smell it. She found she didn’t dislike the smell of him, a musty sweaty male smell. She wasn’t sure how to touch it at first, so simply circled the end with the palm of her hand. His cock was so smooth and marbled with veins, even as she knew it to be surrounded on all sidesby a thicket of coarse hair. She used her left hand to finger that hair gently, and trace its path up his hard belly. She’d only seen him once, when he’d come with the priests to ask her to submit to the selection, and he’d been clothed.

Then she ran her hands down the shaft. It seemed quite long. As she tested his length, she felt him grow even harder, which made her giggle--she had done that to him! _Could she do it again?_ Now, rather than just one hand brushing the shaft, she wrapped both hands around his length. Her fingers couldn’t meet up because it was so thick, but she felt him throb again, and push into her hand for friction. _Oh,_ she realized, _it’s just like how I liked rubbing my place against his! Only...only my mouth must take the place of my pussy._

Sansa thought about this and realized that the main difference between the caverns was that her _mouth_ had a tongue and her lower opening did not, and that her lower place was much tighter and more closed up than her mouth. She determined that she would see if he liked her to use her tongue, but also to make her mouth as tight as she could, so that it would feel almost like down below.

Experimentally, she felt the length of him one last time. She didn’t think the whole of him would fit inside her mouth, but she thought that if she get a tight grip on the base and managed the top bit with her mouth, that she might please him.

She took his knob between her lips, and licked tentatively. Sandor groaned deeply and thrust forward. Sansa was pleased that he seemed like it.

Soon, they found a rhythm. She licked the underside of his huge cock and sucked him in, and he plunged into her mouth at a steady but increasing pace. The thrusting was just like when he was fucking her before, but harsher--at first she wasn’t sure if she was expected to consume him whole (where could she put it?)--but soon she found that if she breathed through her nose, and rubbed her nubbin with her left hand, while sucking along and holding him tight with her right, her whole body was quite relaxed even as he became ever more frantic.

Her jaw was stretched wide and spit was starting to spill out the corners of her mouth when Sansa realized she needed to figure out how to finish him. She didn’t even know how to finish _herself_ \--although she very much wished she knew, since the sensations she was pulling from her woman’s place were so nice. And then she remembered what the priestess had said about humility. _I must put away my own pleasure and focus all my attentions on him, on Sandor._ She heard the warm, rising songs of the priests singing around her and felt it was a sign that she had decided rightly. But how? How to serve?

Then she remembered how he seemed to respond when she touched his balls earlier in the ritual. Perhaps that was the trick? Blindfolded still, she brushed along the inside of his thigh until she found his ballsack. What if she took hold of that as she held his cock? More gently perhaps--it seemed a more delicate organ. She grasped his balls in her hand, and massaged the little nuts she felt inside the sack, and then suddenly she felt his balls clench toward his body.

Before she had time to ask herself “Is this it?” she heard him roar, and he thrust forward into the back of her throat in one great fierce motion, and before she could even gag, her mouth was filling with a salty fluid. _It was the gift of love that the sky god gave the nereid!_ She must not waste a tiny bit and swallow every drop down into herself or the year ahead would be full of disfavor and darkness.

There was so much fluid though, ropes and ropes it that seemed to spurt out of him with no end, but finally he finally shuddered and stilled. She swallowed all that she was given and marveled at the salt taste that was clearly made from ocean water itself. Clever gods. She didn’t want to disappoint the nereids or the priests or Sandor, so she tried to suck out any drops that might be trapped inside, and lick him clean and tidy, without ever releasing a bit of suction.

“That’s good, girl,” she heard from above her. His voice had become so familiar and favored by her, so quickly. Wasn’t that strange?

She pulled her lips ever so slowly off his cock, oddly reluctant to finally release his knob with a pop.

“Did I do well?” she asked, anxiously.

“I’m not sure I can stand now, Sansa, and that’s a compliment,” he rasped, leaning back in his stone seat, and seemingly exhausted by the second ritual.

“I’ll hold you upright. I’ll keep you safe,” she said, with a giggle. He made a sound at that, a sound that might have been skeptical or perhaps fond, she wasn’t sure.

And then she heard sandals slapping on the tiled walkway behind Sandor’s seat, and then the sound of Sandor’s chains being unlocked with a key. Now he was free and soon they would be alone together for the first time ever. Sansa felt a queer feeling in the pit of her stomach, and wondered what they would do with the hours of the niht when they were alone together out on the rock.

“Well done, Sansa! I should have known you would be a talented girl. You come from a good family, just sorely down on your luck of course,” said the priestess, and Sansa was suddenly out of her body and back to the day when her parents’ bodies had been buried beneath the olive tree on the headland. She looked toward her toes, and sniffled a little. No. Head high, Sansa. _You are a Stark._ But then she felt him behind her, so tall--taller than any man on the island except the monster he’d slain, his own brother--and vast and strong. He put a huge, rough hand on her shoulder and pulled her close to him, so that she could feel his body hair and his soft cock against her back. She stood straight and tall, and put her chin up. She could face these priests easily with him at her back.

“It’s done, can we get the fuck out of here?” demanded Sandor. He was so cantankerous! Her father and brothers had been so gracious and gently spoken. It was very strange that he was allowed such disrespect and profanity--didn’t his parents teach him proper speech was necessary to commune with gods who might be walking the earth in disguise as men?

“Yes, Sandor. You are free to follow the path to the rock island. The twelve fires are lit, and you will find hides and furs for warmth if the sea air is moist tonight. If the storm god does not knock you both into the sea before morning, the final ritual will be in the great amphitheater at high noon tomorrow,” said the priestess firmly. Sansa had decided she liked Sandor much more than the priestess, even though he was less holy, but she could never say it out loud, or the gods would hear and they might be angry.

“Come on, little sea goddess. You’re done here. Take my arm and let’s go,” said Sandor. She tucked her hand around his vast arm--his biceps felt much bigger than any part of her, and certainly no part of her short of her skull was as hard as any part of him--and he led her toward the sea. She could feel the sun setting in the west and the cool settling on the east, and thought about her sister and brothers far to the north. Were they all right? Surely Lady and Nymeria and Shaggydog and Summer would keep them safe. Wouldn’t they?

Yes, of course they would. And after the final ritual tomorrow, she would go home to them and they would eat well on the decade of safety that she had earned them with this work, and she would raise them all to be good and strong, like proper Starks. After all, she was the oldest Stark left on the island, and it was her duty and her honor.

 _But Sandor is a westerman, and if I’m deep in the hills in the North, will I ever see him again?_ The thought of separating from this man she’d known only a day made her feel quite desolate. How strange.


	3. alone, in the sight of the gods

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a shorter, quieter interlude before a resurgence of sex and violence in the fourth installment. Sandor POV

The platform on the rock was ringed by twelve torches, as the priestess had promised. He would get to see her clearly tonight, if nothing else.

“You wanna take that thing off once it gets dark? No one’ll be able to see shit across the water. They’ll never know,” he said.

“The gods will know!” gasped Sansa, touching her blindfold protectively. Too good for her own good.

“You hungry?” he asked.

“We can’t eat either!” she said, tutting at him, “Not until the final ritual tomorrow.”

He grunted. Fuck that. Maybe little birds didn’t eat much, but he was starving.

He led her to the largest stack of hides and furs and nudged her gently down. She sat delicately, like a queen, and so he wrapped a couple of skins around her. He liked the look of her creamy naked flesh in the firelight but the ocean wind at night would chill her to the bone.

He clambered over the edge of the platform, past the ring of torches, until he found the spot where he’d planted the rocks and shoved them out of the way to reveal the smoothed, sharpened spear he’d placed there for just this occasion. He’d worked very hard to hide any marks that suggested it was a tool--if the priests had found it, it could reasonably be claimed to be random, wave-carved driftwood.

As he moved and splashed, he saw Sansa following him with her ears, alert to every sound like a snared rabbit.

When this bullshit was over, he wanted her to know she was free for good. She wouldn’t owe anybody shit anymore, least of all him. She would never have to talk to anyone but her wolves again, if it suited her, or she could become a queen of a thousand islands, but she’d not be forced to serve either men nor gods again, not unless she wanted to.

He shoved a few of the stash rocks into the ocean in hopes of disguising their purpose should suspicious eyes come looking, and clambered back onto the platform, and then crossed to the other side, leaving sloppy wet footprints as he did. He wanted to get this done before the sun set or it’d likely not get done at all.

The octopods in the tidepool shallows on the south side of the platform were easy enough. They were fast as fuck, but he was faster, and he knew what kind of rocks they liked for shelter. He speared one, two, three--a purple, a green, and a red. He liked the flavor of the green ones the best. Those would do for a start, but he wanted to get her some fish too, in case a girl from the hilltops thought it was revolting to eat rubbery sea creatures with sucker-clad tentacles.

To her credit, the little bird never chirped once while he was waiting for his moment. She just turned her head so that she could hear him better, and sometimes pulled her hair out of her eyes when the wind whipped it hard in her face. It reached down to her waist when the wind was calm and he wondered if she had a boar-bristle brush to tame the tangles and knots. Maybe he could make her one someday? No, that was stupid. She’d laugh at him.

He caught a big sargos and a young tonos, and bashed their heads against the rocks to keep them from flapping sea water all over her. He roasted the octopods first. He offered her the green one, but she just shook her head. Bloody hell, she actually believed in the damn gods--hell, that was how she’d ended up getting fucked by the likes of him. What did those northerners teach their damn children about how the world works?

He roasted the octopods and the fish by holding them over the holy flames and turning them once the flesh began to sizzle and blacken. He wished he had some sea salt (irony, that, since they were literally inside the sea) or seasonings, but fresh and hot would have to do.

He laid out the green octopod for her, and most of the sargos, but she never touched them, not once. Bloody fool girl. He ate the rest himself and then splashed ocean water on his face in hopes of rinsing the fish bones out of his beard. No need to disgust the girl with his smell as well as his size and his hideous face.

Then they simply sat in silence for a long time, listening to the waves and watching the sunset--well, he watched, she just turned her face toward the warmth, and then rested her face on her curled-up knees when the heat of the day was gone.

He usually hated mindless chatter but he found himself wondering if she wasn’t speaking because she hated him.

But then he saw her reaching out in front of her, awkwardly--

“What, what do you want, little bird? Just spit it out, and I’ll get it for you,” he snarled, annoyed.

“Where are you?” she asked, her voice quiet and still like the ocean on a windless day.

“I’m over here, bird. Tell me what you need, and spare the niceties!” he grunted, desperate to know her mind.

“I’m just looking for you. I thought we might sleep...together, for warmth and such. Seeing as how we already...” she said.

Already fucked. Yes, little bird. Blind stupid foolish little bird.

He sighed heavily and grabbed her--she yelped pleasingly--and armful of of furs. He pulled her against him, so that her little ass was right up against his cock, which was hard and getting harder by the moment. He couldn’t say if he was doing it to torment himself or her or the both of them.

If she was being tormented, he couldn’t tell, she seemed to be humming in contentment and nuzzling deeper into his grasp, slipping her hands into his and pulling his arms closer around her. He nudged his hips toward her and she giggled quietly.

His endless instinct to spite her in her devout, polite perfection meant that he then stilled himself completely. If she wanted his cock, she’d have to ask for it.

Nothing doing.

She kissed his bicep and closed her eyes and just fucking fell asleep in his arms. His cock throbbed so hard he thought it was going to break, but it...didn’t. After a long while, when her breathing had slowed and when he saw her eyes twitching behind her translucent eyelids and he knew she was dreaming--of what does she dream?, he wondered--he extracted himself from her grasp and jerked himself off, spilling his seed into the sea that rocked and splashed below the platform on which she slept. Perhaps the gods would consider his cum another tribute.

He’d fuck her again, one last time, tomorrow, if he didn’t get killed first.

He slipped back into the furs beside her and took her tiny fingers in roughened, scarred old palm, finding it strangely comforting to have this strange, tiny woman sleep beside him and hold his hand. He didn’t think the gods had much to do with the fate of men, but still, as he fell asleep he hoped that if they did meddle in the fate of the islanders that they would cast their favor on him tomorrow. He’d rather not die tomorrow if he still had one last chance to be inside her, one last chance before she was done with him.


	4. meat and mead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the third and final ritual that Sansa and Sandor need to complete
> 
> WARNING: Implied animal slaughter and violence against animals in this chapter.

For the first time since the sacrifice had begun, Sansa was frightened. Not for herself, but for the Hound. She’d only seen him from a distance that one time before he’d chosen her, and then they’d been together in a strange kind of union the past day, but she was already quite sure that nothing he did could ever frighten her. He had been inside her, and through their physical connection she had felt his soul and his heart, and she _knew_ who he was, what he was.

No, Sansa was frightened for a different reason--she wasn’t even afraid of what would become of her and Arya and Bran and Rickon if he failed--they would simply continue to struggle, and perhaps fail, but at least they would be together. No, she was afraid _for_ him, and more than that, she was afraid to imagine walking away from the arena without him.

She barely knew him, truth be told, but when she listened to the hungry roar of the crowd in the amphitheater, she was angry because the deafening noise meant that she couldn’t listen for him. She wanted to hear him grunt as he fought, she wanted to know if he was in pain or struggling or tired, and blind as she was she wouldn’t be able to know if she couldn’t hear.

She barely knew him, truth be told, but she was terrified of losing him today, and without ever really having seen him.

So she prayed. She prayed to the great Olympians and all the earthly gods, the nymphs and the naiads and the nereids, and the centaurs and fauns and satyrs who were so sly and clever that they were only seen in the deepest woods by those with the greatest magic.

Please, she prayed, protect him and keep him and bring him back to me whole.

She was blind, as she had been since she stepped out of the baths yesterday, her eyes behind the blindfold, and she was so high up on the platform above the amphitheater that she could feel the wind off the ocean whipping her long skirt and pulling it up off her legs. She wore no smallclothes, just the sheer gown. She simply chained by her ankle today, but she was alone on the tower, and there was nowhere to go unless she wanted to trip off the edge and hang by her foot until the bronze links strained and tore until she fell to her death.

It had happened before, that fall, to “sacrifice girls” who would rather die than be taken again by the champion, or girls whose champions had failed who would rather die than return to their families in shame.

She had no such inclinations of suicide, so she turned her face to the sky--the glory of the sun god could not blind her today, as she was already blind--and whispered her prayers, in part to drown out the sounds of the battle below, so that each shriek and silence of the crowd did not terrify her.

She was at a great distance from the happening, and yet she listened as if she were at a greater distance still, almost as though she were one of the gods and goddess who crossed the rainbow bridge to paradise and decided, now and again, the fates of men.

She listened as her Hound battled his three opponents, an uncut mountain goat with great curling horns that showed his age and ferocity, a huge bristle-backed wild boar with tusks as long as her thigh, and the largest bull on the island, one so fierce that--even restrained as it had been--it had killed three men on the journey to the arena.

He had to kill them all, one by one, before they killed him. If he failed, he would die, and the island gods would turn on all of them, killing goat kids and calves and ducklings and little children in their beds, and leaving the wheat harvest spindly and small. The rivers would dry in their beds, and old women would die of rattling coughs, and the winds would whip fires through the olive groves.

If he succeeded, he would live, and the animals--and many others--would be butchered and cooked for a great feast, and he would take her, as a male animal mounts its mate, and their congress would signal the beginning of the great bacchanal to celebrate flourishing fertility and new life of every kind.

She heard the great cheers, and the screams, but she refused to tell herself the story of what was happening. He would tell her or she would not ever know. So she prayed, mumbling all the words her mother and father had taught her, saying them again and again, using the links on the chain attached to her ankle shackle as a sort of prayer counter. Over and over again she prayed to the gods to protect him, and over again she knew not if she was heard by the gods, and then--

Then she could smell him.

Or rather, she could smell the reek of fresh blood, and hear the sound of heavy footsteps that she believed and hoped--and yes, prayed--belonged to him.

Speaking his name, hopeful and uncertain, felt like the hardest thing she had ever done.

“Sandor?”

“Yes, bird, it’s me.”

She’d never fainted in her life, but she thought this might be what--

* * *

He’d saw her sway and realized instantly that if she passed out the priestesses and priests would manufacture some shit about how she’d failed and they wouldn’t have to hold up their end anymore.

Fuck that.

So he grabbed her fast, before she could tilt, and kissed her hard on the mouth, and hated to do it, as much as he loved the smell of her ocean-washed hair and the taste of her sweet pink tongue.

She gasped fully awake at the taste of him inside her mouth and then she clutched him around the shoulders, hanging onto him and letting him bear some of her meager weight, half-starved as was. Good girl. That would play fine, the priests were watching from a far distance and they’d pass us through so long as she stayed upright and they pulled off the main...strokes.

“You all right?” he whispered into her mouth, even as he realized he’d stained her pretty skin and gown with all the blood he was wearing. The crowd would love that, but he wasn’t sure she would.

“Me? Are _you_ all right?” she asked even as she nuzzled her forehead into the spot below his jaw where his beard thinned into the back of his neck.

“Yes, of course, bird. You think I’d let a fucking cow, pig and goat get in the way of me fucking you for the last time?” he scoffed. But it was true. No man could withstand him--not even Gregor--when he saw fit to kill, and winning another chance at holding Sansa Stark in his arms was certainly worth killing for.

At that testimony, she seemed to unwind, and as she did, she dropped her hand down his shoulder, over his chest and down his abs and to the edge of his loincloth. He grunted his assent, and she unbound him, pushing the hide away from from his skin and taking his leaping cock in her hand. He hadn’t even realized he was that hard, but fuck he was ready to go and he’d only kissed her.

“You’re ready for me,” she marveled.

He grunted and reached for her breast, nudging aside the nearly translucent fabric that covered her rosy nipple when to his surprise, she stopped him.

_This must be what it feels like when an old one clutches his chest and keels over and dies right there._

He’d been waiting for her to turn him away, but he thought he’d earned one last time with her.

“No,” she said firmly. “Fuck me as a beast would--roughly and without care.”

For a split second he was surprised, and then he was...disappointed? And then, just as quickly, he was enraged, furious, fit to kill. He wanted to kill her, and the bull and the ram and the boar all over again, and Gregor, and his father, and her father, and all the other men on this fucking island, living or dead.

Fuck this show. She wants to be treated like an animal and not his woman? Fine. He could do that. He had been given the key to her ankle shackle upon killing the bull, so he unlocked her, and then he ripped off that ridiculous dress they put her in.

Why pretend she wasn’t fucking naked for all to see?

He shouldered her belly roughly, and flipped her over his shoulder, and when she kicked weakly, he stuck a couple of fingers up her cunt to shut her up.

To his shame--and rage--he found she was already wet for him. So furious at her he felt that he would go blind from it, he took her out of the so-called bird’s nest and pounded down the stairs to the main floor of the amphitheater where all those fucking people could see, really see, the two of them complete the ritual.

* * *

She’d angered him somehow, more than usual. She’d only turned him away from her breast because she’d already been wet and ready for him for hours. While she waited out the morning in the antechamber far below the bird’s nest she’d rubbed herself raw chasing the feeling he gave her, but she could not seem to reach that feeling of release that had come before from being beside him and having his cock tearing into her.

She’d just wanted the final ritual to be over and done with, so that she could finally see him and speak to him as equal, as an unencumbered woman with free choice. But somehow he hadn’t understood.

Sansa felt consumed with shame, half from having failed him and half from being over his shoulder with his fingers up her cunt and yet still so hungry for him. She wasn’t struggling to get away so much as she was grinding into his hand trying to find the friction she sought.

And then the echoing sound of the spiral stair down from the bird’s nest vanished and she felt his feet sink a little into the soft dust of the amphitheater floor, and simultaneously she heard the deafening roars and screams of the audience cheering on Sandor’s final act. And then she heard a reverberating clap and after, utter silence, and Sansa knew that one of the priests had commanded quiet.

Sandor set her on her feet and then spun her around. She could sense that she was sideface to the crowd--the ocean embraced her from one side, the people of her island from the other, the Hound behind her. She stood tall and proud, and did not flinch. She was a Stark after all, and she would do her duty well and truly. He nudged her forward with his knees, and then bent her in half. She felt cool marble below her breasts and belly, and then he was leaning over her and she could feel his cock and balls pressed into her lower back as he stretched her arms and hands out in front of her and bound them with rough hempen fiber to a metal ring embedded in the stone.

She realized, as he tightened the knots of her binding, this was the altar where animal sacrifices were done.

And then she was penetrated.

He took her hips tight in his vast grasp, clutching her so tight in hurt, and his cock was thick and wide as ever, and it seemed to scrape so deep inside her that he touched her womb, and he was hammering into her with a ferocity she had not received from him before. It felt like he was trying to drive her though the stone with his cock, pounding, pounding, pounding, every rhythmic jolt jostling her breasts and her belly and her ass. She cling to the ring with all her strength, feeling that if she did not she would be hammered flat away into oblivion.

She felt his balls slap against her clit and his cock push into her and pull out, so fast, so hard, again and again and again, endlessly, fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck grunted the rhythm of the sweet pain as he penetrated her again and again and squeezed her hips and her ass hard, again and again fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

And then, as from nowhere, he grunted out his completion, and slid his hands to her breast as he finished in her, and pulled and pinched her nipples as though he meant to cause her pain but somehow it simply made her more desperately lustful, and she pushed back against him, seeking more. She wanted more. So much more.

The crowd roared again and again and again for them. The people of the island were ebullient.

But then he kissed her shoulder blade and sighed heavily and pulled out of her and then he was gone.

Now the bacchanal week would begin, seven days of pure debauchery, seven days there was no such thing as an excess of gluttony or lust. The ram and the boar and the bull that Sandor had killed would be slow roasted in coals or stewed for days and then served one by one to the people of the island, while countless other, more tender animals would be butchered as well for the celebration. The streets would swim with blood and the city would be redolent with the smells of incense and food and wine and sex.

Sansa remained bound and naked, face down, her face hidden behind her curtain of tousled, tangled hair, with Sandor’s seed spilling out of her cunt, until the priests came and untied her, and wrapped her in a cloak of peacock feathers.

They removed her blindfold at long last and she squinted against the Mediterranean sun, reflected by all the marble of the holy hill. After so much time in the dark, the light hurt her eyes. She squinted and looked toward the gates and frowned so long and deep that the muscles on the edge of her mouth began to hurt.

She was free now, and she would be honored as the queen of love and beauty at the bacchanal, and soon she would see her family again. But amidst all that reward, she felt as though she’d lost something very precious to her. Something she hadn’t known, when the rituals began, that she would value so deeply: Sandor Clegane, the bloody Hound. Hers. Her Hound.

Where was he?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Adding an endnote to clarify/answer: this is not the end. 
> 
> In the next installment Sansa is the queen of love and beauty of the baccahanal. 
> 
> Likely a little less bondage after this, but heck *other stuff might happen LOL


	5. a discordant tone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> an unwelcome approach

She’d been showered with gifts. The priests and priestesses sat above and behind her, but she was in a kind of throne of her own just below them, and men from across the island seemed to be streaming to her to present her with tokens of their affection. Some of it was useful, some of it merely decorative; she had every intention of selling the larger part of the plunder she’d earned for her family, but there were some items--for example, bolts of fine cloth, a palomino colt and an cask of rare seeds from the far north of the mainland--that would of use to them.

The bacchanal had been underway for half a day now, and the city smelled of woodsmoke and roast meat. Sansa could smell the heady smell of the peonies and jasmine--as well as an undernote of laurel--in her floral crown. The sun had set a couple of hours past and still the men lined up to praise her beauty and lay gifts at her feet. She should be proud and pleased and satisfied, and yet when she was not practicing her courtesies and thanking her supplicants for their attentions and then sending them on their way, she found herself scanning the crowd of spectators that drifting in and out of the temple from the festivities being celebrated outside.  _ Where was he? _

As the hours past, she began to believe that she would not see him again unless she went looking for him and found herself with a simmering anger. Was she the purest of fools for being drawn to him? The sacrifice was duty. The priests had chosen  _ him _ as champion after he had killed their island’s most notorious monster--Sandor’s own brother Gregor--and he had chosen  _ her _ , and their selection had been guided by the gods themselves. They had sacrificed her blood and his seed to the gods and Sandor had taken the lives of the bull and the ram and the boar and re-established man’s pre-eminence over the animals, as the gods held sway over man. And now it was done--and yet he, obviously, was not burdened by any romantic notions about what their three acts had meant.

Sansa called herself a fool and remembered that she she would be returning to her brothers and sisters soon, and tried not to look disappointed when every new man who knelt before her was smaller and more delicate than the Hound. 

It was almost midnight when the line finally petered out and Sansa rose from her throne, alone. She would be allowed a room at the temple for duration of the festival and then she would be escorted back to her home along with a caravan carrying her trove of gifts from these men and the city elders. If she’d insisted, they would have taken her home immediately, but the sad truth was she didn’t want to leave the city yet. She knew  _ he _ lived here, or least he had. He’d come many years ago in the service to the lion kings and stayed.

She weaved a little bit as she stood. Everyone on the island was drunk or high or both, with Dionynus and Pan watching over them all and blessing them now that the sacrifice had been such a success. She’d only had three glasses of the temple’s own rich grapes--wine, red as blood--but she realized as she got to her feet that she hadn’t eaten much, and the fermented drink had gone to her head. Her father had never let her have more than sip at dinner so this was all quite new to her.

_ I’ll sleep it off...alone _ , she thought to herself.

“My lady, may I escort you on your walk?” said a whispery voice from the shadows. “I was a dear friend of your mother’s and I have a gift for you as well, but I wanted to share it with you privately.”

The figure that emerged from the darkness was another disappointment, of course. Too small, too slight. 

“You knew my mother?” she asked, as the man beckoned her to him. 

“Yes, lovely girl,” he said. “Cat and I were very special to one another. My name is Petyr Baelish and we grew up together the river country. I have brought you a gift that I think she would like you to have.”   


Sansa strained but could not remember her mother ever mentioning anyone by the name of Baelish. Did her father know this man, too? As she thought of her father and looked at the man’s thin moustache and slick hair, a chill went through her and she pulled her peacock cloak around her tightly. The night air was still and warm, but still she shivered.

“A gift for you, dear,” said Baelish. As soon as he opened the wooden box, the smell of the moon flowers and tansy hit her. She knew the smell immediately. Arya had gone to a herb woman in the valley the week before Sansa was due to leave for the capital. Arya thought that she was mad for agreeing to be a sacrifice, but Sansa had simply hidden away the pouch in the back of her kitchen shelf and said, “We’ll see.” 

But now, “we’ll see” was in the past, and as she looked down at the concoction she was filled with a strange kind of rage she’d never felt before. She had unlikely visions of herself killing this man, she was  _ angry _ at the way he smelled, and she found she wanted to know what he looked like bleeding from a cut throat like a slaughtered animal. Her ears rang with a discordant tone, and it was the only sound she could hear. She ripped the cask from his hands and stalked, furious, over to a great hot brazier that stood nearby. She’d never smashed anything in her life--she wasn’t as naturally hot-tempered as Rickon or Arya--but she used all her strength to shatter the box into the coals and laughed an unfamiliar laugh when sparks flew all around her and then the dried herbs caught fire. She watched until the box itself was consumed and turned to ash, and then began to walk away.

Baelish not only followed her but grasped at her arm to pull her back. 

“Don’t  _ touch _ me!” she snarled. Again, she felt as though she was possessed by something--she’d become a different person than she was only three days ago. She wanted to bare her teeth as Lady did when she caught the scent of a stranger coming up the hill, but she was not with her pack, she was alone, in a dark corner, surrounded by ten thousand drunks who didn’t know her.

“Please understand, Sansa,” he began, but she could hardly hear him, because even through her cloak, his hand on her arm was like a burn. It wasn’t the grip so much as the mere touch seemed to hurt. She starred at the hand gripping her, and that discordant tone in her ears rang louder, and she wondered if she wrenched away if he would chase her and what she would do then. Perhaps the priests would--

And then, as if by magic, she could feel  _ him _ pressed against her back. She could smell him, and she wanted to turn and bury her face in his chest and hide from the world, but instead she reminded herself that she was a Stark and stood up taller. 

“She said not to touch her,” he rumbled and Baelish snatched his hand away. Baelish opened his mouth to speak, but the Hound wouldn’t have it. “I see or smell you anywhere near her ever again, and I will kill you. You might try to poison me first, or have me executed on some bullshit pretext you concoct with your money-grubbing friends, but I swear by all the gods I will climb out of my grave and tear you to pieces just the same.”

“A terrible misunderstanding, Clegane, if you’ll just--” said Baelish, but then he abruptly stopped speaking and he seemed to shrink back under Sandor and Sansa’s combined glare. He bowed then and turned away, his slippers hissing on the marble floor of the temple.

“Should I kill him for you? He’s dangerous, bird, more than you can imagine,” he spoke into her ear, and she had to hold herself together against the feeling of his tall warmth and his breath tickling her hairline. 

“The gods will judge him as they see fit,” she said, with certainty, and he snorted and then she remembered she was disappointed in him. Or livid at him. Or both.

“Where have you been, you miserable bastard?” she turned, hissing a little.

“Around,” he shrugged as if it were nothing, but he couldn’t look at her. He seemed to be angling his head so that his hair fell more fully over his terrible burns, and she realized he was trying to hide them from her, as if the entire island didn’t know the story of how he’d been one of his brother’s many victims.

She didn’t know what to say and she imagined she would shame her family name if she said what she felt, so she simply took his bearded face in her hands and made him look at her. His eyes were the strangest mix of shame and fear. Her brave wild Hound was  _ afraid _ ...of  _ her _ ? They were both fools then.

By way of apology, she volunteered, “I just said that I wanted it to go fast so that I could talk to you sooner, not that I wanted it all to be over faster!”

Sandor Clegane took a deep shuddering breath and pulled her into him, and finally she could drop into her exhaustation. She was too drunk and everything in this city--all these people, all the sights and sounds and sensations--felt like  _ too _ much.

“You don’t owe me shit,” he mumbled into the top of her head, “you better fucking know that girl.” She smiled quietly into his shoulder and nodded.

“Tell me what you want,” he grunted, “and tell me the fucking truth.”

“I want to go home,” she whispered. 

He froze and then inhaled hard and pushed her back away from him. He looked right into her eyes and said, “I’ll have you back north by sundown tomorrow,” he said, jaw stiff and voice hard.

“No, I mean--I  _ want _ to stay for the festival. I just don’t--I wanted to go home with you. This temple is...it’s so public and I know it’s my duty to serve...but...” she trailed off mumbling, feeling terribly guilty that she wanted to escape the glare of her role and the eyes of so many unfamiliar strangers. Her role was so important to the gods and the island, but she’d done her duty, hadn’t she? Shouldn’t she be allowed a little...peace?

He looked down at her hard, eyes narrowed, and she wondered if he would refuse her. Perhaps he thought the gods would be angry about her leaving the temple, but everyone knew that the Queen of Love and Beauty was free to pick any or all companions to join her in celebrating the gods at the bacchanal--the priests had even reminded her it was so!

“Home with me?” he repeated, almost incredulous, as if he hadn’t believed what he’d heard her say.

She allowed herself a tiny nod--it was her truth, after all, even if perhaps it felt quite dangerous.

“Fuck, fine. Better than leaving you here for the likes of Littlefinger. Come on, girl,” he said, taking her hand and pulling her out through the atrium and onto the street.

As he towed her behind him, so she allowed herself a tiny smile of relief. 


End file.
